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Historical Figures with Unforeseen Downfall and Misfortune

Khalid Elhassan April 9, 2020 33 min

Silver Thursday - United States — Nelson Bunker Hunt. Express News

17. Putting Everybody to Work

Part of Qin Shi Huangdi’s tomb, with thousands of life-sized terracotta warriors. New York Times

Qin Shi Huangdi had everybody working. With unchecked power and the resources of an entire empire to draw upon, he grew megalomaniacal. He launched huge projects with massive amounts of forced labor, such as 700,000 workers toiling on his tomb for 30 years. The famous Terracotta Warriors site, discovered in the 1970s and now open to tourism with its thousands of life size statues, is but a fraction of his gigantic tomb complex. The rest is yet to be unearthed.

Millions more labored to dig canals, level hills, make roads, and build Shi Huangdi over 700 palaces. The biggest project of all was the Great Wall of China. It did double duty: keeping out the northern barbarians, and keeping in the Chinese seeking to flee Shi Huangdi’s heavy taxation and oppressive rule.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.